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Tony Simes B.Eng (Elec), MIEAust, CPEng Australian Transport Safety Bureau The responsibility for rail safety regulation in Australia lies with each State or Territory. Each State or Territory, with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory where rail safety is administered by New South Wales, has enacted its own rail safety legislation. The framework is based on co-regulatory principles, whereby each rail organisation is predominately responsible for the management of its rail safety related operations, and the Rail Safety Regulator responsible for administering each organisations accreditation and verifying their obligations under the relevant rail safety legislation. A "Signal Passed at Danger" (SPAD), describes an incident when a train passes a stop signal without the authority to do so. SPADs present one of the highest safety risks facing the rail industry and are only one precursor to a potentially catastrophic rail incident. They occur where there is an interface between drivers employed by Rail Operators, and signalling infrastructure managed by Track Owners. It is therefore essential that all parties co-operate and apply an appropriate level of resource and commitment to reduce the likelihood of a SPAD incident. This paper presents a Rail Safety Regulators view on SPADs and their mitigation. The paper will discuss topics such as the investigation of incidents, the potential cause, evaluation of risks, identifying control measures and the periodical review of the risk management process. Issues relating to recording, reporting and trending of SPAD incidents at organisational, State and national levels will also be discussed. The aim of the paper is to stimulate thought and discussion in the attempt to identifying new and innovative methods for improving rail safety and addressing the important issue of SPAD mitigation.
Peter Symons F.I.R.S.E. Engineering and Design Manager, Novo Rail Most safety management activities for say, signalling and control systems concentrate on measuring conformance to processes against standards and procedures plus demonstration through risk assessments, V&V activities, arguments and evidence that the system as designed is safe and meets the requirements. During these processes there is usually some emphasis on the human contribution e.g. Human factors as affecting operations and maintenance. However, to achieve an accepted design against a set of requirements can be problematic due to the behaviours of some of the actors, both in the transmitting and in the receiving sides of the process. This paper will describe the approach by the Novo Rail alliance to improve the processes relating to the delegation of Engineering Authority and achieving a better Design Acceptance process to support its extensive program of works.
John Aitken BE MIRSE SMIEEE Aitken & Partners “New rolling stock or electrical/electronic equipment to be used in rolling stock modifications must be designed, built and maintained with regard to EMC in order that they operate safely throughout their operational life. This applies to all normal and reasonably foreseeable abnormal situations, including failures.” Such a statement is easily made but compliance is not readily demonstrated, particularly when there is little or no definition of what might make something electromagnetically compatible (EMC). Signalling systems are generally poorly defined from an EMC viewpoint, so foreseeing abnormal situations can require considerable insight into the design and failure modes of the signalling systems.This paper discusses what is normal and then considers some of the failure modes and vulnerable areas in train detection systems; the threats posed by traction systems
Naomi Frauenfelder TrackSAFE Foundation Manager trackSAFE is a not for profit foundation, established by the Australian rail industry in 2012. trackSAFE aims to reduce suicide and suicide attempts on our rail network; reduce rail trespass; improve level crossing safety through education and awareness. It aims to provide world's best practice support for rail industry employees who experience trauma through exposure to one of the above incidents.
Paul Szacsvay B.E. (Elec) M. Admin. MlRSE MIE(Aust) Principal Signalling Engineer Rail Infrastructure Corporation of NSW It took two decades from the introduction of LED (light-emitting diode) technology, for it to develop to the stage where it first became viable for use in railway signals. In the five years since, manufacturers have made great strides in improving LED colours, light output and efficiency, and LEDs have become a serious competitor for conventional signalling light sources. There is now almost no limit to the signalling applications in which LEDs may be found. As experience grew, the initially belief that LEDs offered an almost perfect signalling light source was tempered by about the idiosyncrasies of the technology. There is a proliferation of quality technical data available on the technology of LEDs and this paper does not go over that ground. Rather it describes the New South Wales experience with the introduction and proliferation of LED signals, the unexpected problems encounted, and the solution found. Despite the problems described, there is no thought of considering a return from LEDS to incadescent light in signals. It concludes by proposing a basic specification for LED signal light sources, to achieve common standard for interfacing and monitoring LED signals.
Geoff Everist BE(Elect) MIEAust AMIRSE Business Development Manager - Systems Union Switch & Signal Pty Ltd The US&S Phoenix Train Control System (TCS) is a typical example of a "new generation" train control system. It provides features expected of a modern system such as "point and click" Graphical User Interface (GUI), integrated train description facilities, blocking facilities, data driven design facilities, use of "commercial off the shelf" (COTS) operating systems and hardware, high reliability and availability through redundancy and much more. This paper provides an overview of the Phoenix TCS by outlining the philosophy behind the design of the system, the features provided and the architecture of the system. Also considered is the application of the system in the Australian context, some of the resulting challenges faced and lessons learnt, and finally the future directions of the Phoenix TCS and "new generation" train control systems in general are suggested.
David Scott BSc. Elec Eng., C.Eng., M.I.E.T., F.I.R.S.E. Senior Signal Engineer – Lead, Calibre Rail The rapid growth in the Western Australian iron ore industry during the past decade has facilitated rail expansion programs that have schedules of implementation beyond 2015.Preliminary engineering studies have been completed and procurement contracts initiated for long lead signalling materials effectively freezing the design model. The main line signalling design concept has been structured around the provision of standardised distributed interlockings controlling turnouts within the limitation of its solar based power supply and acceptable voltage drop along point machine or coded track cables. Adjacent interlockings are vitally connected by track code or failsafe data communications using a lineside transmission medium. A similar approach has been applied to yards that have equally expanded and justification exists to motorising turnouts resulting in the traditional reflectorised Mechanical Point Indicator (MPI) being replaced by Light Emitting Diode (LED) units with the objective of improving approach visibility and defining Limit of Authority (LOA) or track clearance positions. The temporary disruption to iron ore production due to the 2008/09 economy downturn has delayed expansion project activities and provided the opportunity to assess the performance of completed portions. Unfortunately the application of LED technology to yard turnouts has not had any significant impact to reducing yard LOA incidents, with one upgraded yard recording several LOA breaches in the last year. This paper tracks the changes and developments to yard point indicators to provide an understanding of the issues that complicate their application and draws an observation that the cut and paste design approach used to signal large expansion schemes may need to be reviewed from a different perspective otherwise their limitations may contribute to additional operating risks during their 10 year service life.
Marc Chadwick (MTRE, BE elec, Grad Dip Bus) Project Manager Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company (Australia) Limited This paper describes the development of a Centralised Traffic Control (CTC) system for the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) by Westinghouse Brake & Signal Company (Australia) Limited (WBSA).
Michiel Blaauboer MSc Technical Manager Movares Nowadays, the majority of proprietary electronic interlocking systems are built with dedicated hardware. The interlocking industry is a relatively small market compared to other fields of industry; innovation is expensive, and therefore sometimes 'slow'. Besides that, after installation the manufacturer must be contracted for maintenance and especially alterations, creating a 'vendor lock'. The Movares Eurolocking system has the goal to eliminate these issues by using standard PLC's (commonly used in the process industry). Eurolocking is a SIL 4 PLC interlocking completely based on Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) hardware components. Any (SIL 4) PLC can be used in this concept to engineer an open system. Only the logic inside the system is dedicated to the railway environment. The (COTS) components are applied worldwide in many industries. The scale of quantity for these components is bigger than the one for dedicated interlocking hardware. As a result this has an effect on the final price and R&D is going at a faster pace. Another improvement is the decoupling of hardware and engineering. In principle the application is based on open code. As modern PLC's support many open interfaces, modules can be created to directly interface with a wide range of other systems. However, the use of dedicated protocols is still possible.
A.G. Williams Director of Electrification, New Zealand Railways Corporation In December 1981 the New Zealand Governtnent approved the New Zealand Railways Corporation electritying the North Island Main Trunk Railway betwn Palmerston Nortll and Hamilton with a 25kV 50 Hertz system to be camercially operative mid 1988. 'rhe project embraces a range of technical disciplines, both traditiorral to the Corporation and in sane cases new, It also includes sane state ot,the art technology. A number of large civil engineering works were necessary along the route, as well as saw "non-project" operating and route unprovements which were justitiable in their in right, and whilst not being essential to electritication do enhance the completed system. The work was planned in two stages. Stage 1 was the l8lkm tram Palmerston North to Ohakune and Stage 2 the 227km tran Ohakune to Hamilton, See Figure 1. Contracts were awarded in December 1983 tor tne design, supply and installation ot the Stage 1 Signalling, Cmunications, and Traction Overhead, the supply ot Power Supply equipnent and all of tne 22 locomotives required. Separate contracts tor Stage 2 were negotiated with the respective Stage 1 Contractors during 1985. The civil works, including works associated with the main contracts and "non-project" works, were undertaken concurrently with the above contracts by NZK. Except for Cmunications, Stage 1 is now complete on the ground and Stage 2 well advanced. A number of locanotives are also in the country. mtn contracts for ccxrmunications were determined in November 1986 and the Corporation has itselt now taken responsibility for managing and arranging the provision of tne cmunications systems for the electritication project. Because the Corporation's Engineering and operating branch structures and related District & Regional Oftices with separate geographic boundaries were straddled by this large multi-discipline project, the traditional NZK Management structure was not suited tor Implementing the work. The detailed management, co-ordination and control ot the project and integration ot the non-project works was theretore ettected through a specially tom Electritication Project Group, as a division of the General Manager's Ottice reporting direct to the Deputy General Manager. Technical responsibility was retained by NXH Engineering Branches. As a consequence of the NZR organisational changes currently taking place (which are referred toin the next section of this paper), the group is now a separate division of the Freight Winess Group and reports direct to the Group Manager. The structure and staffing of the Electrification Project Group for Stage 1 was largely successful. However to cunplete the project on time it was necessary to significantly overlap Stage 2 with Stage 1. This required considerable extra resources to cope, as well as significant changes to the Stage 1 structure rran carmencement of Stage 2 planning. A partial modification to this new structure was needed recently because ot the termination ot the carmunications contracts by the Corporation. The Project Group is managing the "recovery" and this has necessitated additional resources and a specitic structure sub-set.
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